


building then burning down love

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst with a happy-ish ending, Canon Compliant, Fourth of July, Gen, Hiding, Holding Hands, Introspection, Memories, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Watching Someone Sleep, happy birthday steve rogers, steve rogers birthday fic, walking in the rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1895169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's birthday rolls around, the firecrackers he's been dreading are snuffed out by unexpected rain, and he runs into someone on a washed-out street corner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	building then burning down love

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from U2's "Where the streets have no name".

Steve reaches for the coffee cup on the window sill and takes a tentative sip, and frowns. It’s cooler than he’d like it to be, cool enough that he can taste the water and the slightly burned beans, and he has to content himself with gulping it all down, scalding his tongue and throat as he swallows rapidly.

It’s no way to treat coffee, the only coffee he has, the only thing he’s got in this tiny bolthole of an apartment.

He’s still in DC. Just. As far away from the wreck of the Triskelion as he can get and still be in the district. Four walls painted drab beige. The floor beneath his feet is cold tiles and colder cement. He’s very nearly underground - the apartment is partly sunk into the ground, equal parts basement and bunker.

So he’s at war again, and all that’s changed is that the weapons are better and worse at the same time. There are people in the building, other residents, he thinks. He’s not sure. He’s spent his time here.

The search for the HYDRA asset that had been calling himself the Winter Soldier ended three weeks ago in flames and snow and the heavy metallic smell of blood. Sam’s weight in his arms. Sam is in the hospital, recovering from a shattered knee and a dislocated shoulder. Steve brought him back and watched him fight for his life - watched him pull through - and then they’d separated at the doors, as soon as Sam could find the strength to get up from his wheelchair.

Two days after that, Steve received a phone in the mail, and a collection of SIM cards. He didn’t have to be given instructions. He has to change the card out every time he uses the phone.

The phone’s memory is filled with messages from unknown numbers, no two ever alike. Terse reminders. Snippets of life on the run. Most of them are from Natasha, and there are some from Sam. He has a message each from Bruce and from Clint, and what’s happening to them now Steve has no actual idea: he knows those two can take care of themselves, he trusts Bruce to know when to unleash his anger and he trusts Clint to, well, _distrust everyone else_.

Still, he wonders if he’ll ever be able to get out again. Out into the open again, even if it means being on the run, as he once was in forests full of frozen needles and snow packed underfoot, with the threat of faceless enemies snapping at his heels.

The phone chimes now. He’s been expecting that tinny little cry. Not a message from any of the others. He ignores it. He’ll have time to check the weather forecast later.

Not that there’s much for him to do in any case, what with being cooped up in here.

Steve puts his mug in the sink and fills it with hot water to let stand, and then he pushes the chairs and coffee table out of the way so there’s just enough space for him to exercise. Two hundred and fifty burpees, until he can feel the rapid-panicked stutter of his heart. Five hundred sit-ups, and the same number of back extensions. 

The voices in his head grow louder, not softer, with each repetition.

_He’s a ghost. You’ll never find him._

_I do what he does - just slower._

_SHIELD takes the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be._

And again and again, until the voice distorts, until the voice is shredded underneath the scream of tortured metal and electronics: _Who the hell is Bucky?_

By the time Steve is done he’s almost out of breath, and he’s not sure where the salt in his mouth is coming from. Blood? Tears? Sweat? All of it. None of it. Running together, metallic and bitter - he bolts up from the floor. Slaps his hand over his mouth. Dry heaves. Nausea. A maddening _need_ for _action_. He’s broken into a high-security prison and testing facility - and gotten back out. He’s restarted a Helicarrier and destroyed three others. He’s been shot at and gotten back up. 

He needs to move, and he plants his feet on the cold floor and stays. In. Place.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, but eventually he makes himself move again. Makes himself pick up his phone. The alert for his daily weather forecast has been joined by a message from an unknown number.

_He never left. He’s Stateside._

_It’s a big country._ He hesitates, and then adds, _Take care of yourself. Yourselves._

_You too._

His hands don’t shake when he takes the phone apart, when he prises the SIM out of its slot and tosses it into the mug that is still filled with water. For a wild moment he wishes he could shake. Maybe that would be proof enough that he’s still alive. That he’s still here, and breathing, even when there’s no one else to know what, when there’s no one here to care.

The weather alert is still on his phone when he turns it back on. 

_Fourth of July Forecast: Isolated T-Storms_

Steve looks out the window. A small rectangle of washed-out sunlight. Clouds rolling over the horizon.

According to his phone it is almost noon.

An acrid smell on the air, all too familiar, and Steve holds his breath, holds himself at parade rest. Gunpowder. Gunpowder leads to explosions. Rattle and clatter, too close, insistent angry blasts.

Fireworks at noon.

Steve counts to a hundred, and then again, and once more for good measure, before he can trust himself to move again and not move to defend himself. He falls into the nearest chair. Now he is shaking all over as he covers his face with his hands.

His birthday. He’s trapped. The Great Depression and World War II are long over: exhibits in museums, weathered old buildings, flickers in living memory. Even recent events have been papered over, have been brushed aside: the Chitauri invasion, and the reveal of HYDRA.

He seems to have outlasted all of that; he’s still here and breathing, after all, though there’s no way for him to say with all sincerity that he’s still alive.

What he does know is that right now he’s all alone.

The water is cold when he washes out his coffee mug, and cold when he steps into the shower. He doesn’t feel it. His body has already recovered from his physical stress, from the signs of distress from earlier. He’s no longer tired or sore, and he’s no longer tense, and he’s not here. 

Steve dresses, moving as though through molasses. He thinks about following Sam’s suggestion that he dye his hair black. It might help him stay unrecognized. Nothing to do about the breadth of his shoulders, or the way that he carries himself: he’ll always stand like a soldier, whether alert or at ease. But it could give him that much more freedom to move around. 

For now, he tries his best to hide all of his hair underneath a lightweight ski cap. He eyes the later-than-five-o’clock shadow on his jaw, on his cheeks, and leaves it be. A windbreaker and an umbrella. 

He steps up to the door, and turns right, so he’s facing the hallway closet. Hesitation in his hands as he looks up and down those mostly empty shelves - all except for the second to the last one, which holds a locked and secured metal box.

He knows what’s in it, and he knows how to use it. Natasha had passed a pistol to him together with the Russian-language dossier on the Winter Soldier. It’s a little too small for his hand, and he still suspects it would be a little too large for hers. He’s spent the nights and the long, listless, dragging hours taking it apart and cleaning it and putting it back together. It had been loaded when it came to him. He’d unloaded it immediately.

Now Steve opens the box, and the gun is there.

No thoughts run through his mind as he fills the magazine with low-velocity rounds. Moving on instinct, just short of actually firing the thing - he ends up with his arm in a straight line, with the gun trained on the nearest corner of the apartment, and his trigger finger parallel to the slide, not even touching the trigger guard.

He has no idea what will happen if he gets spotted today. If anyone notices that he’s carrying. He may or may not still have a license, with SHIELD’s reputation in the ashes if nowhere else.

In the end he straps the gun into its holster anyway, tucking the whole assembly just behind his hip, inside his waistband.

By the time he opens the door and braces himself against another ruckus of exploding firecrackers, the sun has been completely blanketed over with heavy clouds, and Steve casts only the faintest hint of a shadow on the ground, even though the clock on his smartphone says that it’s just past high noon.

He still flinches whenever he hears explosions. He can’t stop himself. He forces his own feet forward, one step after another. DC is a safe place. There have been no recent reports of gun-related violence in his neighborhood. It would be safe to assume that everything he’s hearing is attributable to firecrackers and not to guns.

Steve jams his free hand into his pocket and keeps his head down, and he walks aimlessly, turning corners at random.

The distant insistent muttering of thunder is the only warning he gets, and just as he puts his umbrella up - the rain crashes down. Not just rain but an honest-to-goodness downpour, raindrops striking the pavement hard enough to leap right back off, just as he’s about to cross into a public park, and Steve stares in combined shock and satisfaction as the picnickers shout and rush to save their checkered blankets and full coolers and paper-plated comestibles. 

After just a few minutes the rain recedes into a soothing white noise, completely uninterrupted by explosions or any whiff of gunpowder. The air, too, seems like it’s been rinsed clean: soon it’s scoured of throat-clogging grit and the stink of paper and cardboard, and in their place is the earth sweetness of wet soil and reviving grass.

Steve is so, so tempted to send Thor some kind of thank-you card. 

He is equally tempted to put the umbrella away. 

The memory of a Brooklyn thunderstorm, swift and sparse and heralded by a lightning show in dark clouds, bright silent spreading fan of profound light.

He remembers crawling out onto the postage stamp of a balcony, and looking up into the lukewarm fall, and shivering with anticipation as the drops fell soft and fast.

This storm is not like that storm, but Steve remembers that Brooklyn day, because Bucky had joined him and turned the balcony into an even tighter squeeze than it already was.

Steve clenches his free hand into a fist, and remembers holding Bucky’s hand, hidden safely behind his back, where nosy neighbors wouldn’t see. 

That had been the first time, in the rain, the two of them smiling shyly at each other. Bucky and his undershirt gone translucent in the rain, and his hair falling in random pieces into his eyes. The two of them whispering secrets far into the night, with the smells of Brooklyn muted by the washed-clean air.

That might have been the first time they’d said those words to each other. 

“Until the end of the line.”

In the here and now, Steve sinks his teeth into his lip. No one here to hear. The rain would ignore him, or drown him out.

He starts moving again. Steady patter against his umbrella. The boots on his feet are knockoffs of almost-regulation gear. He walks stolidly through puddles; he lets the occasional passing car threaten him with a shin-high splashing. 

The rain keeps falling, ensuring that the sidewalks are clear. 

It’s almost a surprise when he comes to a pedestrian crossing - he hasn’t been thinking of the time passing by, only the steps that he leaves behind on the sidewalks. He’s walked a significant distance from his quarters - no use thinking of that place as some kind of home - and now familiar sights have sneaked up on him, and he shouldn’t be here.

Steve turns a corner and finds himself at a pedestrian crossing. He thinks about jaywalking, and is immediately dissuaded at the shriek of a horn, at the breeze generated by the truck that slams past, just missing Steve by a foot or so.

He thinks about squinting at the license plate - but who would he report it to, and what would the consequences of such an action be? What can he do? He believes in certain things that are no longer of much value. 

So Steve just shakes his head and waits for the lights to change - and then, just as they do, he spots movement, out of the corner of his eye.

The way he’s holding the umbrella, he’ll need to lift it out of the way to see faces and ground-level windows, and his first impression of the person who’s walking next to him is oddly familiar. Beat-up boots and rain-splashed pants.

Whoever that person is keeps pace with him as he walks over the zebra-striped road. 

As they approach the opposite kerb Steve notices with a start that the cuff on the other person is dripping.

He doesn’t have to think about what to do next. Only says, “Hey, uh, would you like an umbrella?” This as he’s raising it, getting ready to hand it over - 

A hand around his. That, too, is oddly familiar, if dirtier. Grime embedded in the knuckles. Calluses and nails clipped short in some places and chewed down to the quick in others.

Steve looks along the arm, up to the shoulder - brushed by equally dirt-clogged hair, hanging now in limp soaked strands - 

He catches sight of those eyes and tenses, but only for a moment - only so that he can put the umbrella back up properly, so that it covers him again - him and the man who’s stepped in, stepped closer, whose left arm is completely covered by his ragged jacket sleeve and a torn leather glove.

“Was there anywhere you wanted to go?” Steve swallows, after, and hopes he sounds neutral. No asking for names, no asking if he’s safe or not. He stopped fighting the Winter Soldier on that helicarrier, and he’s not going to fight the Winter Soldier here or anywhere.

The man seems to be favoring his left leg, so Steve sets a slow pace. No ultimate destination in mind.

Down a couple of blocks, left at a random corner, and the rain is starting to let up.

“Home,” is the ragged whisper that Steve hears.

“Sure, buddy,” Steve says, “is there a place you can go? You don’t have to tell me where it is, and you can take the umbrella - ”

“No. None. Nowhere. Alone.”

“Okay.” 

Steve peeks out from under the umbrella, reorienting himself. “You can come over to mine. It’ll still be a bit of a walk, though,” he tells the man beside him.

“Fine.”

Steve puts the umbrella away at the public park. The storm clouds are still hovering ominously overhead, low and threatening. The thunder mutters rebelliously.

Now Steve takes a good look at his - companion, for lack of a better word. Assessment. He hasn’t flagged despite the length of the walk, though he’s starting to list to the left. Dirt and bruises on the visible patches of skin. 

Steve makes a decision. “We’re not that far,” he says, still neutral and still quiet. “If we quick-march, we can get out of this wet and - you can do whatever you need to do. I can provide you with something to eat, and a first-aid kit - ”

“Fine,” the Winter Soldier says, again - and he picks up the pace himself.

Steve marches with him, and not once does he think about reaching for his gun, not even when he has to turn his back on the other man in order to unlock his front door.

He rushes through to check on the heater in the bathroom, to get some protein bars from the boxes stacked in a corner of the kitchen, and all he hears of his unexpected visitor is quiet breathing and quieter steps - until even those stop.

Steve hurries back as silently as he can, pausing one more time to grab the thin blanket from his cot.

Jacket off, boots off, hair falling in his face. 

Whoever this is - Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier. Possibly both. Also, possibly, neither - has passed out on the threadbare couch. Lines of pain around his eyes and between his eyebrows. Tension in the way he sleeps, as though he might bolt to his feet and run before he even wakes up. 

As carefully as he can, Steve drapes the blanket over him - but the man moves almost immediately, and the fabric drops away from the metal arm.

One deep sleeping breath, and then another - and then the man begins to snore.

Steve covers his smile with one hand.

He doesn’t know anything about his guest except that he snores, as a brash young man running wild on the streets of Brooklyn once did.

Maybe it’s a birthday present, but likely not.

Steve takes in the storm and the silence and the second pair of boots, and he lets himself smile. Something brief, something he can hide, but it’s as welcome as rain in Brooklyn used to be, so many many years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).


End file.
